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"Speaking of Vitiligo..."

I am a physician-scientist who focuses my clinical and research efforts on vitiligoI am a physician-scientist who focuses my clinical and research efforts on vitiligo, and therefore I think about this disease a lot – all the time, in fact. Therefore I thought it would be helpful to share my thoughts with others who are interested in vitiligo as well, particularly the patients who suffer from it and their loved ones. I want to make clear that while I am affiliated with many vitiligo organizations, my comments in this blog are my own, and do not reflect the opinions of those organizations. In addition, my research is largely focused on finding new treatments, and ultimately a cure, for vitiligo. This work is supported by a number of sources, including pharmaceutical companies, which by definition creates potential conflicts of interest. In full disclosure, here is a list of our vitiligo research supporters. Please know that, to the best of my ability, all of my comments are unbiased reflections of my understanding of vitiligo as both a physician and scientist. I do not permit advertisements on my website, and do not endorse companies or products that may advertise on other sites that may be referenced here.

Surgical treatment (and maybe even a cure) for vitiligo

Posted On: Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Many have heard that some forms of vitiligo can be treated with surgical approaches, like skin or cellular grafts. This can be a very effective treatment for some patients, and many times the standard vitiligo treatments are no longer needed. Each procedure has pros and cons, but it seems that the cellular grafts have the best results and can cover the largest areas; this is typically called the Melanocyte-Keratinocyte Transplant Procedure, or MKTP. The caveat is that it doesn’t work for every, or even most, patients. 

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Ruxolitinib (Jakafi) is a new drug that worked for a patient with vitiligo!

Posted On: Tuesday, December 22, 2015

We recently published a report about a vitiligo patient who quickly improved after taking ruxolitinib (Jakafi), a drug that inhibits Janus Kinases (JAKs), which are important for signals that tell the immune cells where to go and what to do. This result is really exciting, because it is an oral drug that had a very rapid effect on vitiligo, improving the patient’s facial pigmentation from less than 1% to over 50% in just 4-5 months. We hypothesized that it might be effective for vitiligo because it blocks a pathway in the immune system that we have found to be critical for vitiligo.

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